Opie Percival Read was a prolific American journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 and humorist. His bibliography lists 60 published books.

As a journalist

Prior to 1887, Opie Read edited five separate newspapers, all in the U.S. South: the Statesville Argus (KY), the Bowling Green (KY) Pantograph, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Little Rock (AR) Evening Post, and the Little Rock Gazette, ancestor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is the newspaper of record in the U.S. state of Arkansas, printed in Little Rock with a northwest edition published in Lowell...

. In 1882, Read founded his own humor magazine, the Arkansas Traveler, which he carried on after leaving newspaper journalism in 1887.

As a novelist

Read brought the Arkansas Traveler, a flowing pen, and a command of Southern dialect

Southern American English

Southern American English is a group of dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from Southern and Eastern Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the Atlantic coast to most of Texas and Oklahoma.The Southern dialects make...

 to Chicago in 1887. He would spend the remainder of his life in the Northern city.

Read's bibliography shows that in his first 20 full years in Chicago (1888-1908) he published 54 separate books, of which 31 were novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

s, 18 were book-length compilations of short fiction such as that published in the Arkansas Traveler, and five were works of non-fiction

Non-fiction

Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...

.

As a novelist, Read is credited with bringing the phrase "There's a sucker born every minute

There's a sucker born every minute

"There's a sucker born every minute" is a phrase often credited to P. T. Barnum , an American showman. It is generally taken to mean that there will always be many gullible people in the world.-Attribution to Barnum:...

" into print in his 1898 novel A Yankee from the West, although the phrase seems to have been in verbal use before this and is often credited to P.T. Barnum.

After 1908, Read appears to have gone into semi-retirement. His authorial productivity noticeably slackened during the thirty remaining years of his life, although he did publish six additional books (two of them juvenile

Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

s).

His reputation

Read's works carried titles like A Kentucky Colonel (1890) and Opie Read in the Ozarks: Including Many of the Rich, Rare, Quaint, Eccentric, Ignorant and Superstitious Sayings of the Natives of Missouri and Arkansaw (1905).

Many later critics have dismissed Read as a presenter of lower-class white Southern stereotype

Stereotype

A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

s for middle-class Northerners.

Later Arkansas Travelers

In 1991-1992, advance workers for the presidential campaign of Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

called themselves "Arkansas travelers."

External links

• Opie Read biography at University of Tennessee - Chattanooga